Wrath Domain, The Ashbastion.
December 14, 2025.
The library stretched endlessly, its towering shelves lined with tomes.
Golden light poured through high windows, scattering across dust motes that drifted lazily in the air.
Fwip… fwip…
Ashen sat comfortably on a deep leather sofa, one leg crossed over the other, a thick history book open in his lap.
His pen moved across the pages of his notebook with every couple of pages turned from the history book.
Over the past two weeks, many things had happened. The most notable among them was his physical transformation as he continued to integrate with Sloth.
The black of his hair seemed to grow more vivid, revealing a glossy sheen that caught hints of the warm light, while his golden eyes glowed faintly now, like sunlight seen through amber glass.
There was something hypnotic about the way he sat there. It wasn't just his relaxed and composed posture.
Anyone watching would find their pulse slowing without realizing why. The serenity around him seemed to seep into the air itself, soothing and almost drowsy.
Scritch… scritch…
As he penned the words into his notebook, Ashen let his mind wander to his recent findings about being an Idle Chronicler.
First, recording historical facts worked indeed, no matter how slow. But that only worked for facts.
And Ashen wasn't talking about events that everyone believed in, thus eventually becoming undeniable facts.
No… he was talking about objective truths. No matter who believed and how many believed in a wrong event, as long as it was false in reality, Ashen wouldn't feel the feedback of progression in his path.
So he was effectively stuck reading and recording events, and only after confirming the feedback back in the conceptual void would he move them to his notebook.
This made his notebook a rare historical book free from inaccuracies and fallacies.
But Ashen didn't have enough presence of mind to appreciate it, since, unfortunately, the amount of wrong historical information was surprisingly overwhelming.
Many facts that Seravellians believed in turned out to be false according to his pathway feedback.
'It's almost as if someone's been deliberately rewriting history,' he mused, though the thought felt incomplete. The pattern of falsehoods wasn't random… it was curated.
Thankfully, he'd gotten a "vacation," so to speak, since he reported his advancement.
This was officially a time to acclimate himself to his new skills and physical changes, and everyone who advanced got this privilege.
But not everyone got as much time as him.
Ashen was scheduled to go back only after the arrival of the new recruiters of the 2026 selection, and that was only because his battle achievements had reached the Ashbastion, and they deemed this free time a fitting reward.
Ashen was unsure if he was the only one who got this much leeway or if he was an exception, but he was resolved not to waste a single moment of this downtime.
As he drew the last stroke, he gently set his pen down and closed his eyes for a moment, attempting to organize the events he'd confirmed to be true over these past two weeks.
First, the Reign of Terror, which had transpired more than two thousand years ago.
Ashen had gleaned a lot after thoroughly digging through the records, despite the period dating so far back.
He found that humanity was oppressed by demi-humans and other mortal races.
He found out that humans were helpless and only waited for their death.
He found out that humans didn't have the system then.
…He also found out that all of the above was actually… false.
What was most interesting was that the claim about not having a system became true right after that period ended, in the Exodus.
And Ashen couldn't understand for the life of him how humanity had managed to survive a thousand years without it. Even going through most of the next period, which also lasted a thousand years, without the crutch known as the system.
Especially after he'd joined the Bloodwall and seen the horrors of those monsters.
'I can only tip my hat to our ancestors… These men are true heroes to hold the line for so long with only mana and their bodies…'
Ashen slowly opened his eyes and glanced down at his notebook, which mainly recorded the history of the last period, the Thousand Years' War, which was still ongoing to this day.
The war started as a three-way conflict between the humans, the Narkals, and the demi-human coalition, but nowadays, it had devolved into the Narkals just killing everything on sight, and the other races doing their best not to die.
There was a turning point to this, which happened, unfortunately, two hundred years ago—just before humanity got its system back.
Had it happened after, the outcome might not have been the same.
Sadly, there were no what-ifs or what-nots in life, and history proved it.
According to the books, the human army—consisting mainly of the Pride Domain—was in a confrontation against the demi-human army, which was led by the then-prestigious nine-tailed fox clan.
What happened next was pretty straightforward.
The two armies didn't get the chance to clash before a Narkal army, consisting of the combination of more than a hundred tribes, had ambushed and wiped out the humans, who fought valiantly but futilely.
The demi-human army followed them in death shortly after.
But according to his new Chronicle senses, most of the records were only half-true or outright false.
'Well, at least the portion about humans fighting valiantly was true…' Ashen mused bitterly.
After losing all credibility in the official history books to produce a single fully true historical event, Ashen had turned his sight to the more obscure texts.
Ones that noted conjectures, unconfirmed facts, or even just records of rumors that had circulated then.
After digging deep enough, he encountered a sentence that normally he'd skim through—since he found it in a book filled with absurdities—but it was surprisingly true, according to the Chronicle.
Ashen read the phrase written in his notebook.
The presence of the Narkal army had not been a coincidence; there was a human traitor amongst us.
Ashen hadn't been overly surprised by the mention of a traitor. If his recent delving into history had taught him something, it was that every age was filled with traitors and backstabbers.
…Even if this traitor worked for monsters that only sought destruction and death. Just like there were traitors, there would surely be those who were delirious beyond redemption.
But what truly shook him was the line right after.
…This traitor goes by the name of… The Astrologer.
Ashen stared at the words, his pen hovering motionless above the page.
The Astrologer.
The same name that even the Bloodwall General feared to hear spoken out loud. The same figure tied to the Veiled Moon cult that threatened humanity from within.
A traitor from two hundred years ago… still active today?
'Impossible. No one lives that long. Unless…'
A title passed down? A cult's founder whose followers carried on the work? Or something worse…
His mind raced through possibilities until it honed in on the worst possible deduction.
'...He is the same person. reaching a high enough step on his pathway would naturally prolong his lifespan…'
He flipped back through his notes, cross-referencing dates and events.
Every major human defeat in the last two centuries had anomalies attached to it. Rumors of betrayal. Unexplained intelligence leaks. Coordinated Narkal strikes that seemed too precise.
And always, the veiled moon played a part, whether in plain sight or in shadow.
Ashen closed the notebook slowly, his expression neutral.
'If this is true… if there's been a single entity orchestrating humanity's downfall for two hundred years…'
He didn't finish the thought.
Instead, he stood, tucking the notebook under his arm, and glanced around the empty library.
The golden light seemed dimmer now, the dust motes less peaceful and more like ash drifting through a tomb.